It's raining and the only
good thing about that is that it has put out the rest of the fires.
Konoha is in ruins, burned to the ground and trampled by the demon
we'd been unlucky enough to simply be in the path of. Just plain
misfortune and now we're burying eighty five shinobi, and one of them
is the Hokage. Simple bad luck and the number of civilian dead is
eight times that number. Honest fate, and we're holding this ceremony
in Akagahara because at least here, its the clover that is red. Not
the stone and soil beneath our feet.

And the sky is crying
because of it.

The remaining shinobi of
the Hidden Leaf of Fire Country are standing in rank and file, trying
to hold their faces impassive. But in both aspects I can see massive
gaps, even amongst the Gennin recruits. Young pups with aging eyes,
and I can see a few of the Chunnins trying to look like the
second-level nins they are, and suceeding. Some of them only out of
the academy 8 months and they've had the most thorough experience of
shinobi life it's possible to have. Poor kids. There are a few
others, but not as many Chunnins survived as Gennins... but both did
better by far than the Jounins. Not many of them made it, and some
that did were better off having not done so. I think of the Uminos,
and imagine their screaming torturous deaths, remember that somebody
had the wit to drag their son away from the battle. I can see him,
his second year at the academy, but now he's standing looking at his
feet and not many can tell the tears from the rain running over that
scar on his nose.

But the Umino boy isn't
the only one who finds himself alone, my eyes stray to the just
teenaged kid stepping up to the shrine to pay his final respects.
Hatake Kakashi, ANBU for all of twenty three minutes prior to
Kyuubi's first appearance. The only one of his unit to make Jounin
before his voice broke.

The only one if his unit
left alive.

He lays his flower down,
looks at the picture of Yondaime and then pulls another two flowers
from his vest and puts each down separately. It doesn't take a genius
to understand they're for his sensei's other Gennin students, who
can't be here. They're with their sensei though, maybe that helps
Kakashi a little.

Or maybe it just makes
everything so, so much harder. As he steps down from the shrine his
visible eye is fixed on the ground and he takes up his place in the
front row, in the middle of two empty spaces left for his team mates.
Obito and Rin.

Standing alone. Maybe like
he always will.

The service ends, and
people walk slowly back to the wreck of Konoha they're trying to
rebuild. I spot Sarutobi-sensei, he is gazing over at me. We look at
each other, and I see that even though he spent more time with the
Fourth than I did over the last few years, he knows my pain at his
loss must cut deeper.

He's never yet lost a
student to death, I can't say the same. I look away first and glance
over to where the Hatake boy was standing. To my surprise he's gone,
and I never sensed him leaving. A few of his agemates - still Gennins
for the most part but with a few high-flying Chunnins - realize he's
gone too, and a girl with crimson eyes whispers something about the
boy and I realize from her term of adress he's younger than she is.
She looks worried suddenly, and tugs on the sleeves of the closest
two Chunnins, scruffy but sober Asuma and the unnaturally solemn Gai.

Asuma and Gai go looking
for him a minute later, both come back with bloody noses and burst
lips but don't say a word about it. Kakashi was never good at dealing
with people at the best of times. I watch the girl, a Gennin named
Yuuhi Kurenai, silently fix their wounds and leave, not looking back
to the picture of my dead apprentice sitting atop a mountain of
chrysanthemums.

I find him alone, hair
flattened by the rain, both eyes fixed on the memorial stone. The
Sharingan that has just propelled him into into the stratosphere of
the shinobi elite is staring dully at the black stone, draining his
chakra almost as fast as a cut to the wrist would drain his
lifeblood; because he still doesn't know how to control it properly -
and now has nobody to teach him. His chakra levels are so low I can
tell he'll be dead in a few minutes. But still he keeps staring with
both eyes, trying to see something that isn't visible. That maybe
isn't there.

"Underneath the
underneath," he says quietly - I can just hear his low lilting
voice through the raindrops. "Sensei you always said a ninja has
to see underneath the underneath... and I'm trying. Sensei I'm really
trying to see with everything I have - just like I told you I always
would. But I can't see. I can't see anything underneath this. There's
no bigger meaning. There's no greater purpose. You're just dead. You
and Obito and Rin are dead. My family are dead. You're not here. And
I am." He stops, for a moment I think he's seen me but I realize
he's just trying to force himself to breathe. As he talks again, I
hear the vitrupation rising in his quiet voice.

"When Obito and Rin
each died... you told me it was a bigger part of existance, that
their presence and loss was to shape us into what we would need to
be. That it was okay that they existed for that. But it's not okay.
It never was. How is it okay to lose everyone that ever mattered to
you?! HOW?!"

He's shouting now, and I
can see his one black eye welling with furious, betrayed tears. He
shouts for a long time, so fast I can't make out the words after a
while and it just becomes one long cry of pain and futility. I make
myself listen, force myself to hear this, because its the one thing I
won't let myself do. I'm not crying for you, my student, I'm not
letting any of this pain out because inside is where it belongs. Next
to my heart like you were, closest thing to a child I'll ever have.
Closest thing to a parent the orphaned boy raving at that memorial
will ever know. After a while, Kakashi stops and I know he feels
empty.

"There is no
underneath," he says, his voice broken and quiet, "Losing
all of you hasn't shaped me into anything I want or need to be. All
there is is me. And I never liked me very much anyway."

For a few minutes he
stands there in defeat then finally his body gives out, and he
collapses - cracking his forehead on the step of the monument, blood
spilling from a new cut on his young face.

Only now, when I can see
him sprawled in the muddy grass do I realize his mask has fallen down
so it lies around his neck. I see his face for the first time,
probably the first person in Konoha to know what this prodigy really
looks like.

The answer is he looks
heartbroken and young.

He's so fucking young.

He's barely thirteen years
old and already his world's broken beyond fixing. He wants to die. He
wants to drown in the rain, bleed til there's no pain left. I've
always respected the feelings of others about this kind of thing. Let
people fight their own battles, interfering only makes it hurt more
in the end. I've left people to take themselves away more than once,
let them walk their own path because really - if you want to go who
has the right to stop you?

But not him.

My apprentice would never
forgive me.

The youngest Jounin in
Konoha's history is not dying in the rain, slumped over a piece of
obsidian with dead people's names on it, not caring if he wakes up or
not.

He's just not.

Your sensei was so angry
when they made you a Gennin, Kakashi. He was enraged that they let
you and the others graduate at 5 years old. Times of war, they said.
He argued for your time of youth. You're only young once. But you're
guaranteed that once. Or at least, he'd thought so. Until he met you.
Grown up before you could reach his knee. Capable of killing someone
before you'd kissed your first girl. He didn't begrudge you the life
of a ninja, Kakashi, but he wanted you to live for you before you
lived for everyone else. So you'd know what you were really fighting
for. Sarutobi-sensei had listened to him, heard his every word but
the fact was 20 shinobi had been killed by Hidden Mist that morning
and Konoha needed more soldiers. No matter how young they may be.

Maybe a part of my student
knew this had to happen. Times of war, of change, of demons and
sacrfice: what were the odds any of you would survive for long? He
wanted you to have something of your own to fall back on, to start
again with when you started losing the people you based your life
around.

You live for everyone but
you, kid. Sounds like someone I used to know.

Now everyone but you is
dead - so what are you going to do?

Maybe your sensei knew you
would be left here one day. And so he tried to give you a childhood
with him. He asked for you to go on his Gennin team. He tried to get
you to act like a kid and a shinobi. Not easy, especially when you're
as clumsy with people as that apprentice of mine. And anyone can tell
he failed but he was true with you. He took care of you. And your
teammates cared about you too.

He became Hokage because
of you. Because as Hokage he could make sure nobody was ever
graduated that young again. That no matter how genius a child might
be they would be left a child, let be a child until it was the right
time to become shinobi. He wanted to protect this village from
everything, including itself. That's the kind of idealistic idiot he
was.

I don't blame you for
wanting to die. A big part of me wants to too.

But you only live once
too. And you need to survive. The Fourth Hokage gave his life for you
as much as the other villagers - and I'll be damned if I let his
sacrifice go to waste where it mattered to him the most.

I pick you up, you're
limp, you don't move. I can't tell if you're breathing. I pull your
mask up so it sits over your nose like its meant to. In seconds we're
in the hospital and they've got you in with the medic-nins. They
hesitate for a moment. Is it worth bringing him back? There will be
nothing more for him when he wakes up. I bellow orders at them, they
snap to it. Being a Legendary Sannin counts for something. I sag into
a chair in the waiting room and wish Tsunade was here, she'd be able
to make sure you were okay. But Tsunade has problems with the dead of
her own. And maybe, maybe she'd just leave you to die like you want.

The head medic-nin comes
through. You're going to survive. You'll be unconscious for weeks,
maybe a month but you'll survive. There won't be anybody with you
when you wake up but you will wake up. Maybe by then, things won't be
as raw as they are now. I go through to see you, and - seeing where
the cut on your forehead is - lift the bandage over the wound.

It's a funny,
one-of-a-kind sort of shape. Almost like a feather, or a leaf.

That blond idiot of mine
gave himself one of those tripping during training, trying to push
one of his teamates out the way of a wayward shuriken. It looked
exactly like that, was in exactly the same place. He got it when he
was thirteen years old. I smile, there's no way you can't have
noticed it after 8 years under his care.

Underneath the underneath,
Hatake Kakashi. Even with the Sharingan you can't see some things
until someone shows them to you.

He's in you. In everything
you do. And when you wake up and look in the mirror you'll be able to
see that it's true.

Who knows, maybe you'll
even be as tall as him one day...

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